Matt Hancock’s two-minute hate against footballers

That’s twice in the space of four days that UK health secretary Matt Hancock has stuck the boot into Premier League footballers for their poor performance during the coronavirus crisis.

The first kick arrived in response to a journalist’s question during one of the government’s pandemic briefings last week. ‘Given the sacrifices that many people are making’, Hancock told the nation, ‘including some of my colleagues in the NHS who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I think the first thing that Premier League footballers can do is make a contribution, take a pay cut and play their part’.

This weekend Hancock followed through, telling ITV’s current-affairs show, Peston, that ‘footballers [should] club together and support our hospices and support the national effort we’re all in’.

It ought to make no sense. Why, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, is the health secretary taking potshots at footballers? Sure, they’re very wealthy. But then, so are many other people across the business world. And yet Hancock is not suggesting that CEOs of supermarket chains or online retailers should be ‘playing their part’ in the ‘national effort’, and giving up a percentage of their earnings?

No doubt there was a degree of cynicism on Hancock’s part. From the failure to provide tests and personal protective equipment to frontline healthcare workers, to the pressure exerted by a shrill, death-counting press corps, Hancock and the government have been having a hard time of it. He probably thought that focusing a bit of ire on Premier League footballers would provide a useful distraction.

But it’s important to remember that Hancock didn’t pluck Premier League footballers out of a hat of rich folk. They already were a long-standing object of derision and resentment among the middle classes; they already seemed to symbolise amorality, avarice and self-centredness.

So, yes, it was a wretchedly opportunistic move on the part of Hancock to attempt to re-focus public attention on footballers, and away from policymakers and public-health bureaucrats. But he didn’t put footballers in the stocks himself. They were already there, restrained and ready for a moralistic pelting. Indeed, footballers have been there for much of the past three decades, after the Premier League formed, broadcasting rights started generating eye-watering revenues, and – crucially – the Fever Pitch-reading classes decided that, while they really liked football, there were less keen on the increasingly moneyed but vulgar working-class louts who played it.

That’s why footballers’ wealth has always irked the middle-class pundit-sphere. Not because of the wealth itself, but because of who is earning it: namely, young, working-class men. Hence their critics always draw attention to the ‘vulgarity’ of footballers’ consumption, from the pointless fleets of Ferraris to the ‘tasteless’ mansions. They argue implicitly that at least those earning comparable amounts in business or the media know how to spend it well.

This is not to say that footballers are saints. They’re not. They’re good at kicking a bag of wind about, not practising priestly virtue.

But they’re not inveterate sinners either. Many footballers also do a lot of under-the-radar community work, and some already donate quite a bit their salaries to local causes, from Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford, who recently led a fundraiser worth in excess of £140,000 for meals for vulnerable children, to Wayne Rooney, who has long supported Claire House Children’s Hospice in the Wirral.

And footballers’ ongoing dispute with the Premier League and their respective clubs over a proposed mandatory 30 per cent pay cut is not born of greed, but of principle. The footballers, represented by the Professional Footballers Association, rightly worry that merely giving up a third of their wages will only benefit the profit margins of their employers, rather than non-playing staff, let alone society at large. They’ll happily donate a part of their salary to help others who need it, but they’re not willing to line their already wealthy employers’ pockets.

But why let the truth about footballers get in the way of their continued demonisation? It seems our political class has found an Orwellian complement to the orchestrated applause for the NHS – that is, a two-minute hate towards footballers.

Tim Black is a spiked columnist.

Picture by: Getty.

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Ecgbert King

7th April 2020 at 5:49 pm

Businessmen are running profitable and sustainable enterprises, if not they go out of business.
Fund Managers, investment bankers and all the other usual comparisons are making sustainable returns for their clients and employers, if not they’re fired and so on…

If, as you say, footballers are worried about wage cuts just to maintain their employers profitability then they don’t understand the world in which they operate, and neither do you.

Footballers are employed in largely loss-making enterprises, and their incomes are the bulk of the reason for that. They are also employed in enterprises that have dual objectives – points/trophies and profitability – both of which are rarely achieved by most clubs and in most clubs lead to conflicting outcomes. They effectively operate as personal service companies in their own right anyway, and as such should take a look at ensuring their revenues are sustainable. They aren’t if their clubs go bust.

The model is entirely different to normal enterprise and it is perfectly reasonable to ask footballers to look at their wage levels when their employers can’t even operate and generate revenue, out of their self-interest if nothing else.

michael savell

7th April 2020 at 5:14 pm

Footballers are too well overpaid but,no doubt things will level down when the fans can no longer afford to watch them and Feminism rears it’s head in football management.At least footballers pay their dues and do a fair amount of charity work and,you must remember have a very limited career.Furthermore footballers are forever in the public eye unlike those in the financial world who never seem to get criticised at all irrespective of the fact that they “win” all the time,even when they deserve to lose,some even get big bonuses when they lose.I suspect that,in Hancock’s case it is the “men”part he does not like.Since this virus started I have seen and heard nothing but claims about male violence in marriage from the woke generation even though we are being made aware of how many and what% of marriages are now FLR’s

popij pij2

7th April 2020 at 5:07 pm

Linda making over 9k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people say to me how much money they can make connected so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my existence. This is what I do… SEEMore here

Scott McCulloch

7th April 2020 at 4:52 pm

What an odd article for Spike to have published. The issue, as a lot of people on this comments section have noted, has nothing to do with disgust at working class kids making shed loads of money; the issue is that hard up, poorly-paid staff at Premier League football clubs are being furloughed on 80% pay (which is, of course, when you strip away the jargon, essentially a tax-payer provided subsidy), whilst those same clubs continue to pay their incredibly wealthy footballing staff 100% of their wages. So in the era of COVID-19 taxpayers are essentially subsidizing Harry Kane’s lifestyle. That’s the point that Matt Hancock was addressing, and as a member of the government he’s got a right to do so – the furloughing scheme wasn’t designed to protect the wealthiest in society and stick the boot in on the poorest. But that’s exactly what’s happening with Premier League Football Clubs right now. So I don’t get Spiked’s line on this. It’s exactly the type of elitist behaviour that, if exhibited by, say, the EU, would have them foaming at the mouth. Yet for some reason, here, they’ve put up Tim Black to do a passable impression of Ken Loach, coming over all moist eyed and crackly voiced at the thought of poor working class millionaires being heckled a little bit for perhaps, ya know, being a little greedy. Quite sweet, and all that. But not really addressing an issue that I thought would be right up Spiked’s street. Perhaps Brendan O’Neill should spend less time flouncing around Hyde Park with all the collectivist spirit and sensibility of Louis XIV on one of his more narcissistic days, and more time editing the magazine that has his name on it.

zonia sawyer

7th April 2020 at 2:22 pm

Lily Whitey making over 9k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people say to me how much money they can make connected so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my existence. This is what I do… Details Here

Robin Boothby

7th April 2020 at 11:25 am

I value the nature and breath of Spike’s reporting immensely. Generally it is a very rich mine of information and opinion.
I watched the press conference at which Matt Hancock made his first comment about footballers’ salaries. I think it was in response to a question prompted by the news that some football clubs were applying for government support from the Coronavirus Interruption Scheme ( loan or grant, I can’t remember which). There were some comments about tax payers subsidising footballers’ salaries and others about the benefits of footballers paying both direct and indirect taxes.
You could say Matt Hancock should have made no comment, but others would say he should have answered the question. In any event, it doesn’t seem to be the spontaneous hate, which Tim Black is describing. Would you say that is Hancock’s cynical opportunism or the journalists gotcha? Or should we debate the substance, rather than make the headline about who said what?

Naomi buckler

7th April 2020 at 6:00 pm

Completely agree – to my knowledge neither time did Matt Hancock volunteer any comment about footballers out of the blue, he just responded to a question that was put to him. I would have expected Sp!ked to have been the first to have pointed out that the outcry is misreporting – they are usually very good at not just going along with the MSM line.

Joyful Cynic

7th April 2020 at 11:14 am

If premiership footballers are forced to take a pay cut, then once club staff are all paid the only place that money should go is to the hundreds of non-league clubs who provide community sport up and down the country and who live hand to mouth at the best of times and who are facing oblivion because of this virus. Their season has been thrown out, their income destroyed – but the FA is making sure they do still have to pay all fines and subsciptions. If anyone needs the top footballers money it is the rest of the footballing nation.

Jim Lawrie

7th April 2020 at 11:00 am

Any chance you could reference the “journalist’s question” or reproduce it here?
Was Hancock being opportunistic in response to a mention of footballers or was his comment gratuitous?

Thomas Rainsborough

7th April 2020 at 10:50 am

I’m not sure the objection to footballers at the moment is about their pay per se. It’s about clubs like Liverpool which was happy to lay off all the non-playing staff, many of whom, presumably are on pretty low pay, while paying the full amount to the players who are not even providing the usual level of “entertainment” (if rolling about on the ground counts as that).

If the players had said something lime “OK, we’ll take a 20% (50%, 75%) cut so that the tea lady and the groundsman can be paid their full wages”, they’d have looked fine. But when people who are paid £100,000 a week for 90 minutes actual “work” (and individual players are likely to have the ball for no more than 5 or so minutes during the game) and appear to be saying “I’m perfectly happy for Doris the tea lady to get nothing so long as I get my £100,000 a week” then they deserve all the abuse and ridicule that’s undoubtedly coming their way.

A Marshal

7th April 2020 at 3:26 pm

It seems unfair on the face of it. But the non-playing staff have no work to do, as there are no customers to serve. The players are required to do the same amount of work as before – failing to maintain match fitness is a sackable offence, or they’ll be fined if retained. The non playing staff have lifelong careers to return to. The playing staff will be redundant and unemployable by 35. A player like Wayne Rooney, may never be paid again to play footie if this goes on much longer. Many less famous players may never work again. Many players, are already giving big money to charitable causes, and 50 % of any paycut is financed directly by loss of tax revenue which means the NHS more than anyone else. I personally refuse to pay any money to watch football because I think they’re overpaid; but unlike government, the players obtain their remuneration freely given, not by coercion. And I for one refuse to begrudge them their good fortune.

Jim Lawrie

7th April 2020 at 9:36 am

Another resentment against footballers was that their ever rising salaries were guaranteed by advertising via TV money, and crowds.
Even pirate sites make money for them when sponsors evaluate how much exposure a club can give their product.
No word on the 99% of footballers who do not make it. Left to fend for themselves, with little in the way of other skills or opportunity, and a major blow to their morale at a young age.

Also not mentioned is that many African footballers do in fact give huge amounts of their income to extended family and projects back home.
Football players have little opportunity to avoid tax, unlike wealthy businessmen.

Danny Rees

7th April 2020 at 1:48 am

“The first kick arrived in response to a journalist’s question during one of the government’s pandemic briefings last week. ‘Given the sacrifices that many people are making’, Hancock told the nation, ‘including some of my colleagues in the NHS who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I think the first thing that Premier League footballers can do is make a contribution, take a pay cut and play their part’.”

This irked me a lot. How dare this Tory use the sacrifices of NHS staff to attack the wages of other people in a different industry when his government is slashing the NHS and thus making the lives and jobs of those staff even harder especially during the current virus crisis. Shameful man.